Westward Movement
Reading Notes: American Yawp Chapter 17
II. Post-Civil War Westward Migration
- Reasons for westward migration
- Gold Rush, to escape Religious Persecution, to acquire land
- Many of the first American migrants had come to the West in search of quick profits during the midcentury gold and silver rushes. (page 2)
- a significant portion of the mining workforce were single men without families dependent on service industries in nearby towns and cities. There, working-class women worked in shops, saloons, boardinghouses, and brothels. Many of these ancillary operations profited from the mining boom: as failed prospectors found, the rush itself often generated more wealth than the mines. (page 3)
- Others came to the Plains to extract the hides of the great bison herds. Millions of animals had roamed the Plains, but their tough leather supplied industrial belting in eastern factories and raw material for the booming clothing industry. (page 3)
- nearly seventy thousand members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints..., Mormons were fleeing from religious persecution...to Illinois, then Missouri and Nebraska, and finally into Utah Territory (page 4)
- Hundreds of thousands of Americans used the Homestead Act to acquire land. which allowed male citizens (or those who declared their intent to become citizens) to claim federally owned lands in the West. Settlers could head west, choose a 160-acre surveyed section of land, file a claim, and begin “improving” the land by plowing fields, building houses and barns, or digging wells, and, after five years of living on the land, could apply for the official title deed to the land. (page 5)
III. The Indian Wars and Federal Peace Policies
- Gold Rush, to escape Religious Persecution, to acquire land
- Many female Christian missionaries played a central role in cultural reeducation programs that attempted to not only instill Protestant religion but also impose traditional American gender roles and family structures. (page 9)
- If Indigenous peoples could not be forced through kindness to change their ways, most Americans agreed that it was acceptable to use force, which Native groups resisted. (page 10)
IV. Beyond the Plains
- The attacks on Native nations in California and the Pacific Northwest received significantly less attention than the dramatic conquest of the Plains, but Native peoples in these regions also experienced violence, population decline, and territorial loss. (page 12)
- The treaties that had been signed with numerous Native nations in California in the 1850s were never ratified by the Senate. (page 13)
- State laws from the 1850s that allowed white Californians to obtain both Native children and adults as “apprentice” laborers by merely bringing the desired laborer before a judge and promising to feed, clothe, and eventually release them after a period of “service” that ranged from ten to twenty years. Thousands of California’s Natives were thus pressed into a form of slave labor that supported the growing mining, agricultural, railroad, and cattle industries. (page 13)
V. Western Economic Expansion: Railroads and Cattle
- Aside from agriculture and the extraction of natural resources—such as timber and precious metals—two major industries fueled the new western economy: ranching and railroads. (page 13)
- By “annihilating time and space”—by connecting the vastness of the continent—the railroads transformed the United States and made the American West. (page 14)
- The transcontinental railroad crossed western plains and mountains and linked the West Coast with the rail networks of the eastern United States. (page 14)
- By 1880, approximately four hundred thousand men—or nearly 2.5 percent of the nation’s entire workforce—labored in the railroad industry. Much of the work was dangerous and low-paying, and companies relied heavily on immigrant labor to build tracks. Companies employed Irish workers in the early nineteenth century and Chinese workers in the late nineteenth century. (page 15)
- The railroads had created them, and the railroads ended them: railroad lines pushed into Texas and made the great drives obsolete. (page 18)
- By linking the Plains with national markets and rapidly moving people and goods, the railroads made the modern American West. (page 18)
VI. The Allotment Era and Resistance in the Native West
- Passed by Congress on February 8, 1887, the Dawes General Allotment Act splintered Native American reservations into individual family homesteads.
- upended Native lifestyles and left Native nations without sovereignty over their land
- Tribal governments and legal principles could be superseded, or dissolved and replaced, by U.S. laws.
- Under the terms of the Dawes Act, Native nations struggled to hold on to some measure of tribal sovereignty.
VII. Rodeos, Wild West Shows, and the Mythic American West
- Rodeos
- Americans also experienced the “Wild West”—the mythical West imagined in so many dime novels—by attending traveling Wild West shows, arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s.
- stock “characters” of the American West—cowboys, “Indians,” sharpshooters, cavalrymen, and rangers (page 23)
- Most Americans believed that Native cultures were disappearing or had already, and felt a sense of urgency to see their dances, hear their song, and be captivated by their bareback riding skills and their elaborate buckskin and feather attire. (page 24)
- The western “cowboys and Indians” mystique, perpetuated in novels, rodeos, and Wild West shows, was rooted in romantic nostalgia and, perhaps, in the anxieties that many felt in the late nineteenth century’s new seemingly “soft” industrial world of factory and office work. (page 25)
VIII. The West as History: the Turner Thesis
- Frederick Jackson Turner presented his “frontier thesis,” one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” (page 26)
- saw, instead of a tsunami of war and plunder and industry, waves of “civilization” that washed across the continent
- Americans, Turner said, had been forced by necessity to build a rough-hewn civilization out of the frontier, giving the nation its exceptional hustle and its democratic spirit and distinguishing North America from the stale monarchies of Europe. (page 26)
- Turner worried for the United States’ future: what would become of the nation without the safety valve of the frontier? It was a common sentiment. (page 27)
- Turner’s thesis was rife with faults, not only in its bald Anglo-Saxon chauvinism—in which nonwhites fell before the march of “civilization” and Chinese and Mexican immigrants were invisible—but in its utter inability to appreciate the impact of technology and government subsidies and large-scale economic enterprises alongside the work of hardy pioneers. (page 27)
Westward Expansion Video 1: Postwar Westward Expansion
- 19th Century beliefs about the American West
- A place isolated and separated from the East
- Exploration driven by heroic individuals for the sake of exploration itself
- Imagined vacancy
- believed that the west was vacant
- believed that the Indians were not settled and moved around
- Modern Interpretations of the West
- West is not separate, but an extension of the East
- Westward movement as a commercial venture
- pursuit of profit
- Social and ethnic heterogeneity
- many more different groups other than just white cowboys
- Racial Strife/exploitation of natural resources/corporate control
Westward Expansion Video 2: Importance of the Frontier in US History
- Turner on the importance of the frontier in US History
- Frederick Jackson Turner
- Turner's Frontier Thesis - 1893
- "Frontier" is the meeting place between 'civilization' and 'savagery'
- settlement = civilized
- savagery = non-European settlers
- US History until 1890 can be interpreted as the inexorable movement of American civilization westward until the Pacific
- the movement of settlement to the west
- The more civilization moves west the less savagery there is
- 1890 - means savagery is vanquished
- A form of American Exceptionalism: our confrontation with the frontier forged unique American virtues and traits
- Exceptionalism - arguing that your group is somehow elevated over others
- the rest of civilization never had to deal with the frontier
- because of our dealings with the frontier, we have unique traits/virtues
- American ingenuity, willingness to explore, innovation, and improvise
- false dichotomy
- Question: What is missing in the Turnerian Thesis?
- The idea of the Westward expansion is commercial expansion (profit)
- More modern historians are debunking Turner's Thesis
Westward Expansion Video 3: Homestead Act of 1862
- The US Government issues free land to those willing to move west
- The best land was given to big business
- uncharted territory
- had to be productive & work the land for at least 10 years
- way to move up in prosperity
- the land was not the best, some even had no trees
- The best land was given to big business
- Agribusiness replaces family farms
- commercialization of farms
- profoundly alters the way of life
- Railroad
- Transcontinental Railroad
- connect the east to west for big business
- profoundly alters the way of life
Westward Expansion Video 4: Capitalism, Race, and Labor in US History
- Capitalism, Race, and Labor in US History: A Perennial Theme
- Capitalism is inherently expansionist due to profit goals
- Cutting labor costs is crucial in the attainment of profit > cheap labor
- Cheapest labor found abroad (Asia, Sothern and Eastern Europe during the 19th century); therefore connected to 'race'
- Chinese Laborers
- Push Factors (China)
- State of political instability
- Famine
- Overpopulation
- American Recruiters making false promises (Guangdong Providence)
- sent to bring male laborers to America
- looking for cheap labor
- sojourner - no plans of permanent settlement in the host place
- Pull Factors (West coast US)
- Western Commerce
- Source of income
- Chinese Labor Status
- Harsh conditions
- wage exploitation
- Paid less than white workers
- created racial violence
- Mining was the first industry to hire the Chinese
- Railroad - there was a shortage that the Chinese sojourners could fill
- Proved to be very skilled and able workers & recognized as the most valuable labor source
- "Yellow Peril" - the Chinese threat in the west
- laws passed that were directed toward Chinese workers
- Similar laws as Black Codes
- Couldn't own property, couldn't own firearms, couldn't testify against Whites in court
- 1882 Chinese Exclusion act
- First and only Immigration Act to specifically designate a particular racial group from immigration
- Aliens ineligible for citizenship
- Orientalism was a prevalent worldview that divided the world into East and West, with the two worlds being fundamentally different and incompatible with each other.
- Economic needs: Cheap Labor
- National/Political Needs: Racial Homogeneity
- How to resolve the contradiction?
Westward Expansion Video 6: Capitalism & Racial Replacement in the West
- Economic needs: Cheap Labor
- capitals sought cheap labor abroad
- national goal to catch up with those countries that lead the industrial revolution
- National/Political Needs: Racial Homogeneity
- Nativism - belief that true Americans are those who are of Anglo-Saxon (English) decent
- How to resolve the contradiction?
- Racial Replacement in the West
- Manifest Destiny - Americans were divinely appointed by God to populate the West
- Indian Removal
- Trail of Tears - southeastern states - Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida. Indians living on land that could be converted to cotton fields. Moved to Indian territory - Oklahoma
- In the beginning, treated Indians as sovereign nations but converted to domestic dependent nations
- Indian Wars - right after the Civil War
- Custards Last Stand
- American Government changes its policy of dealing with Indians
- Focus on assimilation
- The slogan was "Kill the Indian, save the man"
- Forced on Reservations
- Isolated, not integrated
- Kept them separate but wanted them to assimilation
- The Dawes Act of 1887
- Redistributed land to the Indians
- Forced to accept the worldview that land is private property
- Ghost Dance Movement
- To Native Americans - attempt to resist assimilation
- To Americans - the act of rebellion
- lead to the massacre of them
- Marked the end of 4 centuries of armed conflict between Europeans and Native Americans
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